Carphone Warehouse has posted a “strong” full-year performance in line with expectations.
The electricals retailer generated profit before tax of £133m in the year to March 29 from £125m the previous year.
It said it delivered on its guidance of pro forma headline EBIT, recording a 14% increase to £151m from £132m the previous year.
Its sales fell to £3.28bn from £3.35bn the previous year but like-for-like sales jumped 5.3%.
Carphone Warehouse chief executive Andrew Harrison said: “Carphone Warehouse has had a strong year.
“Strategically and operationally, we have moved our business forward significantly, showing further progress on 4G, developing our award-winning tablet-based assisted sales tool, Pin Point, growing our Connected World Services business, and taking steps to realise value through the proposed sale of Virgin Mobile France.”
In May Carphone Warehouse announced an exclusivity agreement on the sale of Virgin Mobile France to Numericable Group.
Carphone said the performance was driven by countries such as the UK, Spain and Ireland, while it experienced challenging markets in some of its other mainland European businesses, such as in the Netherlands and Germany.
Meanwhile, in the year Carphone Warehouse agreed a merger deal with Dixons, which the European Commission cleared yesterday.
Harrison added: “The history of Carphone Warehouse has been one of anticipating change and positioning the business to take advantage of this change.
“Looking ahead, the shifts we see in the marketplace offer considerable opportunities to create value for our employees, our customers, our suppliers, our partners and our shareholders. From a position of strength, we are planning to take greater advantage of these developments through our proposed merger with Dixons Retail Plc.”
Carphone also signed a deal with Samsung in the year to operate more than 60 standalone Samsung stores across Europe. It has already opened 33 stores across seven countries.
In the period Carphone bought back Best Buy’s 50% share in Carphone Warehouse Europe, which is the reason why the results are given on a pro forma basis as though the European had been 100% owned by the group for the whole year.
The retailer said, excluding France, it opened or relocated 94 stores during the year and closed 130 stores, ending the year with 2,024 stores, of which 292 were franchise stores, up from 268 at March 2013.
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